As a guild master, raid leader and main tank of a raiding team I thought I'd share a little non-ret perspective.

First off, from a PVE point of view, you'll want to note that there are a hell of a lot of 10 man guilds compared with 25 man guilds out there. I did read some statistics a few months back (can not find the source!) that suggested there were something like 28,000 10 man "progressive" raiding guilds out there, and 2000 25 man guilds. The guild I lead is itself a 10 man raiding guild. However, what I look for when I'm recruiting, isn't always how high classes are on the damage meters - I do pick out a number of the infamous top DPS classes (lock, rogue, mage) but everything after that is utility and raid buffs. Here comes part of your problem as ret: you're currently underpowered (UP! YEAH!) when compared to other DPS specs, but at the same time, you'll find it hard to find a 10 man raid team who doesn't want a protection paladin and holy paladin in the team. Your bits of utility then become less important since the prot and holy are bringing a all the hands we need, two dev auras and what not. Then there's trying to balance the number of people after each piece of tier gear - in a team where a prot pala, disc priest, holy priest and warlock are highly favored, with some guilds then also opting for a second warlock or a shadow priest, you're quickly approaching half of your raid team on the same tier token, which, from experience so far, appears to drop less often than the other two (purely based on experience in my own raids - anybody else having the same experience?). You then want to look at the gear that you want. You end up (as a guild master) in this situation where you can either bring the ret pala, who would be rolling on pretty much the same gear as the prot pala, and who also brings very little extra to the raid, or find yourself a fury warrior who brings all the banners and needs slightly different stats on his/her plate.

The result is that your problem is not only that ret is currently weak, but also because prot is OP and needs the same gear. If I thought that my prot warrior was better for my raid than my prot pala is, my first point of call would be to immediately switch to my warrior, and find a ret as, having a ret + holy I'd still have the utility that I had before, and little need to alter our guild strats, which are often based around BoP solo tanking.

As a guild master and raid leader, and as a paladin tank, I think ret needs buffing and prot needs nerfing, as that would make it feel less mandatory to take a prot pala to 10 mans. I absolutely adore playing my ret offspec, and would love to allow our fury warrior to try his prot offspec sometime so that I can raid offspec for a bit. Alas, the way the two specs are at the moment, I do believe it would seriously hurt my raids to do so.

I have not played PVP since back in vanilla, and that was as a derp pom pyro fire mage, so I really can not comment on PVP.

Yeah, Conq seems to be universally elusive. We have alts with 3-4pc HC Vanq tier, but only ~5 pcs of HC conq tier across the raid. GG.

A lot of what Tekagi said is true, but it doesn't truly encompass the Ret plight. Melee is already at a distinct and inherent disadvantage over ranged in both PVE and PVP. Obviously, you NEED tanks (in PVE), so that's considered an "out" for most melee classes to take in an effort to remain raid-viable. Exception here is Rog's of course, as they don't have that option; however they remain uber competitive DPS, and now also have some utility and increased survival to secure their spot. Most other melee have the option of Tank and 2 DPS specs. So Prot, or Arms/Fury, Blood or Frost/UH, Guardian or Feral/Moonkin. Basically, if you don't want to tank, you still have 2 options on how you want to DPS, and usually can either pick your favorite or pick the most viable/OP one.

Paladins don't have this. Paladins get Tank/melee/healer instead. Which puts us in the unique position of "if you want to DPS, you get one way to do it". Incidentally, that one option is 1) melee, 2) historically lackluster compared to other dps, 3) historically lackluster compared to other melee, 4) providing the same utility as their other spec's, nothing unique, and 5) has a social stigma of being a safe-haven for baddies.

ANY of those 5 issues alone is enough to get Ret on a chopping block in any progression minded PVE or PVP team. Not competitive DPS? Sorry, we're gonna stack rogs/locks/whatever. Melee and not a Rog? Sorry, need ranged. No group utility, or no group utility we don't already have? We'll get someone else. However, Ret gets all 5 simultaneously. G fucking G.

Add to that, that ret shares/needs gear that would otherwise go to 1) Prot pal, the strongest tank, 2) DK, the strongest non-rog melee, 3) Priests (disc or shadow), strongest/required healers or good ranged with utility, 4) Locks, strongest range, or even 5) HPals, very strong healers with great utility and there's no reason to throw gear to the Ret. This is obviously only a PVE problem, but looking at it from a PVP standpoint: Why would you use conquest to buy Ret gear just so you can be relegated to the bench or a life of random BGs, when you could insted buy Holy plate and actually get invited places?

Ret is about 2 expansions behind in terms of unique utility, cooldown reliance, burst/ability timers (cooldown cooldowns, yo dawg), survival options, innate survival vs stun/silence/fear, and overall dps. In some of these cases (like innate survival) we've moved BACKWARDS over the expansions. We've had our old unique utility stripped away and either entirely removed from the game, or given instead to Holy paladins/all paladins. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it helps the Hpal's, but Ret got nothing to compensate this loss. Further, this is exacerbated by the balance around HOLY instead of around PALADINS; the dev's have said "unless you're a masochist, all the smart paladins just go Holy for PVP, so we don't really concern ourselves trying to balance ret since there are other options". Even though those options require a completedly different gear set, role, and playstyle. Thanks guys.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

- Dispel on the otherwise useless Hand of Salvation, freeing up HoSacrifices original purpose of reducing incoming dmg on teammates/breaking cc on yourself aswell
- Bring Hand of Freedom stun removal back. Make it a talent in tier 4, replacing unbreakable spirit (make it baseline or don't, noone cares) and giving players the REAL choice between 2 dispels/snare removals/sac's and stun removal every 25 seconds. ofc usable on teammates when the paladin is cc'ed. Increase hand of purity's damage reduction to bring it up to the other two choices.

- Dispel on the otherwise useless Hand of Salvation, freeing up HoSacrifices original purpose of reducing incoming dmg on teammates/breaking cc on yourself aswell
- Bring Hand of Freedom stun removal back. Make it a talent in tier 4, replacing unbreakable spirit (make it baseline or don't, noone cares) and giving players the REAL choice between 2 dispels/snare removals/sac's and stun removal every 25 seconds. ofc usable on teammates when the paladin is cc'ed. Increase hand of purity's damage reduction to bring it up to the other two choices.

Paladins fixed.

Wouldn't call it fixed really, though they are good ideas. The issue remains though, that what you are suggesting would just further buff Holy/all paladins, not just Ret, which would still facilitate the "if you have the same utility, just go Holy bro" mentality, since melee is the scum of the earth.

You'd need to make the freedom stun-break a Ret-only (or Ret/Prot, but it's clear they want tanks out of PVP) thing. Make it work with clemency, who cares? It's not like anyone DOESN'T take it in PVP anyway. Give Ret some form of defense, other than lol-bubble. It's too easy to train melee, and too easy to shut down a Ret over all other melee. Disarm, fear, stun, silence. We have no breaks to any of those, save trinket or bubble (compared to zerk-rage, lichborne, cloak, not being reliant on casting, not being able to be spell-locked etc.). Ret's got too many weaknesses, and no real strengths.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

As a guild master, raid leader and main tank of a raiding team I thought I'd share a little non-ret perspective.

The result is that your problem is not only that ret is currently weak, but also because prot is OP and needs the same gear. If I thought that my prot warrior was better for my raid than my prot pala is, my first point of call would be to immediately switch to my warrior, and find a ret as, having a ret + holy I'd still have the utility that I had before, and little need to alter our guild strats, which are often based around BoP solo tanking.

As a guild master and raid leader, and as a paladin tank, I think ret needs buffing and prot needs nerfing, as that would make it feel less mandatory to take a prot pala to 10 mans. I absolutely adore playing my ret offspec, and would love to allow our fury warrior to try his prot offspec sometime so that I can raid offspec for a bit. Alas, the way the two specs are at the moment, I do believe it would seriously hurt my raids to do so.

I have not played PVP since back in vanilla, and that was as a derp pom pyro fire mage, so I really can not comment on PVP.

Originally Posted by Nairobi

Paladins don't have this. Paladins get Tank/melee/healer instead. Which puts us in the unique position of "if you want to DPS, you get one way to do it". Incidentally, that one option is 1) melee, 2) historically lackluster compared to other dps, 3) historically lackluster compared to other melee, 4) providing the same utility as their other spec's, nothing unique, and 5) has a social stigma of being a safe-haven for baddies.

Add to that, that ret shares/needs gear that would otherwise go to 1) Prot pal, the strongest tank, 2) DK, the strongest non-rog melee, 3) Priests (disc or shadow), strongest/required healers or good ranged with utility, 4) Locks, strongest range, or even 5) HPals, very strong healers with great utility and there's no reason to throw gear to the Ret. This is obviously only a PVE problem, but looking at it from a PVP standpoint: Why would you use conquest to buy Ret gear just so you can be relegated to the bench or a life of random BGs, when you could insted buy Holy plate and actually get invited places?

Brilliant, well thought out and insightful as to why Ret is underperforming.

Also a big problem is (apparently) that every joe-wow player has a Ret (whether this ret is actually seen in Competitive PVE OR RBGS is another story), but it seems to be stopping the dev team from giving Ret something to make it outstanding.

All in all, balance comes when all classes have good points, bad points, and excellent points. E.g. Ele shaman horrible single target, but excellent cleave and utility. That is why you see in G Recruitment people looking for Eles all the time even though Ele Shaman damage really isn't that great unless cleaving. Same for MANY other classes. (Granted about 3-4 other specs suffer same as us, including Ferals and Enhance)

Ret is average Single target, and though its utilities are technically great, any competitive Heroic Guild/RBG will have a prot OR holy Pally that will give all the necessary goodies.

So why Ret? Might as well bring a rogue, DK or Warrior to round out the team am I right? This is why Ret needs to bring something to the table.

The game overall is way OP, so people refuse to buff Ret to get to the same OP level just becouse it whould be OP. WTF?

Here is my same ideas to fix it since MoP BETA with some included FOR RET FKCING ONLY:

0) REAL RBG utility. Something with the same level of: Smoke/Solar/Ring of Peace/Ring of Frost/Typhoon/Ursol/Gorefiends/Grip/Powershot/Explosive Trap/Pet to defend a base/Thunderstorm/Area FEAR/Stun with low CD (some STRONG RBG UTILITY like EVERYONE ELSE HAVE for RET ONLY)1) Instant Repentance (think BASELINE PARALYSE for Monks - this is not OP, is a MUST)2) 1min CD Blinding Light (6 secs, dot breakable CC - 2 mins is way out of hand, look at other classes CDs), 3) Bring back the Glyph of Magic BoP (nice on Cata, not a reason to remove it)4) 2min Devotion aura OR make it last for 10 secs (3 mins is a joke, 6 secs does not help a lot for the CD)5) Absolve on Hand of Salvation, so we don't have to trade a mitigation hability for a dispel (duh)6) Umbreakable Spirit as BASELINE, can nerf Divine Shield if needed (everyone have some kind of bubble like deterrence/dispersion/iceblock on a lower than 5 mins CD - 3 mins is the actual number nowdays)7) Decent Symbiosis - (Wrath is a bad joke, that got old and even worse)8) Hammer of Righteous have no need for a target, like Divine Storm is now (Ret's AoE already suck enough as it is)

"I notice my rating actually boosts when I remember to have fun. Playing competitively while also enjoying yourself and focussing on having good games instead of getting rating is way more important.
After 2.2k the fun devolves into a twisted realm suffering and despair and you will quit pvp from extreme traumatic stress and you will probably xfer to Moon Guard and join some Belf rp guild and become a prostitute in Silvermoon."by Clukclukbewm

But still, instant Repentance and 1 min blind would be much more help than more damage.

"I notice my rating actually boosts when I remember to have fun. Playing competitively while also enjoying yourself and focussing on having good games instead of getting rating is way more important.
After 2.2k the fun devolves into a twisted realm suffering and despair and you will quit pvp from extreme traumatic stress and you will probably xfer to Moon Guard and join some Belf rp guild and become a prostitute in Silvermoon."by Clukclukbewm

But still, instant Repentance and 1 min blind would be much more help than more damage.

Don't think they were joking. One of them was getting visibly pissed when I told him the damage wasn't really the only buff Ret needed. Now he's trying to get me to Ret for our RBG group, saying it would be better than the boomkin I play. I'm not really convinced... nothing big happened.

I'm topping DPS on everything with my Ret. Really, 160k TV crit on every butt on my way. That got to count. Still, the other things are the important, not this.

Sad to see how short sighted people are about how the game goes arround. Still, as a Ret, if I have someone to CC/Peel, I can kill anyone on my burst. At least now I can play someway...

"I notice my rating actually boosts when I remember to have fun. Playing competitively while also enjoying yourself and focussing on having good games instead of getting rating is way more important.
After 2.2k the fun devolves into a twisted realm suffering and despair and you will quit pvp from extreme traumatic stress and you will probably xfer to Moon Guard and join some Belf rp guild and become a prostitute in Silvermoon."by Clukclukbewm

I'm topping DPS on everything with my Ret. Really, 160k TV crit on every butt on my way. That got to count. Still, the other things are the important, not this.

Sad to see how short sighted people are about how the game goes arround. Still, as a Ret, if I have someone to CC/Peel, I can kill anyone on my burst. At least now I can play someway...

How are you getting 160k? I still have my old gems (resil) and I'm getting 55-60k crits in random BG's (resil is normalized now anyway, pretty much.) Is that with CD's and fully gemming str? The PvE 4 set?

How are you getting 160k? I still have my old gems (resil) and I'm getting 55-60k crits in random BG's (resil is normalized now anyway, pretty much.) Is that with CD's and fully gemming str? The PvE 4 set?